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Akers: Religious Education vs Indoctrination into the Spartan Mindset

On today’s installment of Liberty Counsel’s “Faith and Freedom” radio program, Shawn Akers was discussing a recent 4th Circuit Court decision upholding a South Carolina law that allows students to receive elective credits for taking off-campus religious education classes.

The case involved a lawsuit filed against a Spartanburg school district, which was interesting to Akers because it supposedly highlighted the difference between the worldview of the Founding Fathers and that held by the warriors of ancient Sparta:

You see these two worldviews colliding. One is the worldview of the Founders that said that we are a moral and religious people, that our Constitution was created for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate for any other. And that not only is religious allowable but it’s something that we have a responsibility to train in our children.

Versus another worldview and it’s very close to that one we see in Sparta. Do you know what they did in Sparta? They took the children of people at a very early age, they took them away from people at a very early age. The ones that were deemed undesirable, especially young girls, baby girls, were just killed. The ones that were too weak to live were allowed to die. Only the toughest and the strongest were given over as property of the state and they were dictated to from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed to be completely indoctrinated with the Spartan mindset, to be completely indoctrinated with the religion of the state, the state of Sparta.

And we see these two religions, these two worldviews coming head to head. One is that of liberty of the Founders and the other says, no the state owns your children and we’re going to train them accordingly.